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Geological Survey of Alabama 

EUGENE ALLEN SMITH. State Geologist 



A FOREST CENSUS OF ALABAMA 

BY GEOGRAPHICAL DIVISIONS 

(Supplementary to Monograph 8) 

BY 

ROLAND M. HARPER 



[Reprinted from the PRocEEDixcis of the Society of Amerkan Foresters. 
Vol. XT, No. 2. I>iil i li.iliLil Ai i iil. I!tl6] 




UNIVERSITY, ALABAMA 
1916 



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A FOREST CENSUS OF ALABAMA BY GEOGRAPHICAL 

DIVLSIONS 

r.v Dr. Rolaxd M. Uari-kk. (^)]le^•o Rdint, N. Y. 

\\\ a r('])(ii-t on forests, prepared in 1013 for the Geoloo-ical Survey of 
Alaliania.^ the writer divided the State into 1.") main divisions and a few 
of lesser rank, listed the trees of each division with approximate per- 
centages of al)undance in the original and present forests, and gave some 
statistics of tlie amount of forest, density of population. numl)er and ca- 
pacity of sawmills, etc. The estimates of the percentage of woodland in 
each region were guesses hased mostly on ])ersonal ohservation, for I had 
not then noticed that tlie government census reports for 1910 (and 
earlier) gave the amount of land in farms and woodland on farms for 
each county, from which the per cent of forest in any region could he 
com})uted more accurately. 

Two c)t]i{>r sorts of statistics in government reports which would have 
made my trealment more complete were likewise overlooked. The census 
reports give tli(> amount spent for fertilizers in each county during the 
year immediately preceding the census year, and tlie ratio lietween that 
and the acreage of improved land gives a pretty fair index of the fertility 
of the soil.' Lastly, a report on tlie hiinher industry of the T'liited States, 
published liy the Bureau of Corporations of the Department of Com- 
merce and Lalior in January, IIHS. contains a careful estimate of tlie 
acreage and standing timber owned or controlled by lumbermen in each 
of the more important lumber-producing States on January 1. 191 L 
The timber is divided into a few groups of species, and in the case of 
Alal)ama and a few other states the State is sululivided into several 
groups of counties, corresponding ap])roximately with natural di\isions. 

Some of the geographical divisions described in my 19i;> report are so 
narrow that they do not cover as much as half of any one county, and 
consecpiently the available county statistics cannot very well be applied 
to them. In the ]tresent paper these narrow belts are combined with ad- 
joining ones, thereby reducing tlie number of dixisions to ten. as was 
done in a preliminary ])aper on the subject in the Southern Lunilierman 
for April T). 1!>1:>. and in the abstra--t in American Forestry previously 



' Monogra])li S. or Economic Botj.'.y of Alaham;i. i)art 1 : see abstract in 
American Forestry for October. 101'-!. and review in P"'orestry Quarterly for 
December. 1918. 

= See Science II. 4L' : 500-5(t8. Oct. 8. 1015. 



(208) 



D. of D. 
NOV 7 19m 






FOREST PEXST/S OF ALABAMA 



209 



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referred to. The map used herewith is very similar to that used in the 
Southern Lumberman and identical with that in American Forestry and 







Mobile 




FOREST REGIONS 

OF 

ALABAMA 



the Forestry Quarterly. (It happens that eight of the ten statistical 
divisions of Alabama defined on page 285 of the Bureau of C'urpuratiuns 



210 PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY OF AMERICAN FORESTERS 

report on standing timber correspond about as closely as divisions fol- 
lowing county lines can witli the same numljer on this map, and they 
must have been laid out with geographical contrasts in view. But the 
third and fifth are so heterogeneous as to be of no value for present pur- 
poses, and just what determined their selection is not apparent.) 

The regions as here defined, with their areas, are as follows. Their 
location is sufficiently indicated on the map, and for notes on soil, topog- 
raphy, climate, etc.. the reader is referred to the publications already 
mentioned. 

1. The Tennessee Valley, including tlie "barrens" of the Highland Rim 
on the north — 4,900 square miles. 

2. The coal region, which can be subdivided into the plateau and basin 
regions — 6,400 square miles. 

;>. Tilt; Coosa or Appalachian Valley region — -4,000 square miles. 

1. 'J'hc Piedmont region, witli tlie Blue Ridge along its northwestern 
edge — 5,400 square miles. 

5. The central pine belt, witli three subdivisions — 7,450 scjuare miles. 

(i. Tlio black belt or central prairie region— 4,300 square miles. 

7. The (Jhunneniiuggee Ridg(! and blue marl region — 2,300 square 
miles. 

s. The southern ral bills, togetlier with the post-oak flatwoods on the 
nortb and the lime hills on the southwest — !),()35 square miles. 

!>. The lime-sink or wire-grass region — 1.350 square miles. 

10. The southwestern pine hills, together with tlie Mobile delta and 
the coast strip — 5,550 square miles. 

The census of liHO divides the land area of each state into land not 
iji farms, improved land in farms, woodland on farms, and other unim- 
proved land in farms. In a state like Alaliama. which was originally 
almost conqjletely wooded, except for a few ])rairies in the central por- 
tion (now nearly all under cultivation) and small marshes along the 
coast, the sum of the land not in farins and the woodland on farms gives 
a pretty close approximation to the present forest area. The "other un- 
improved land" is defined as including "brush land, rough or stony land, 
swamp land, and any other land which is not improved or in forest." 
Tho. inclusion of swamj) land in this category seems unfortunate, for in 
the South a swamp is always a forest; but the amount of forest slighted 
in this way may be just about counterbalanced by marshes, uncultivated 
prairies, towns and cities, roads, and farms overlooked by the enumer- 
ators. 

Of the 33,818,560 acres of land in Alabama, the sum of the land not 
in farms and the woodland on farms, according to the census of 1910, was 



FOREST CENSUS OF ALABAMA '211 

21,531,013 acres, or about 65 per cent. Of this, 10,879,000 acres of forest 
and 435,000 acres with young timber or none at all (a little more than 
half the forest area of the State, or about 33 per cent of the total area) 
belonged to lumbermen on January 1, 1911, according to the Bureau of 
Corporations report. The total stand of timber on their land was 56,- 
300,000,000 feet, or 5,200 feet per acre. If the density of the rest of the 
forest is the same, the State total would be about 112 billion feet. 

In the statistics for Alabama in the standing-timber report the trees 
are divided into three groups, namely, longleaf pine (which doubtless in- 
cludes slash pine also), shortleaf and loblolly (presumably including also 
black and spruce pine), and cypress and hardwoods. It is evident that 
the lumbermen tend to specialize in longleaf pine, the most useful tree 
in the State, for the percentage of that in their holdings is considerably 
higher than the writer's estimate for the whole State and the several sub- 
divisions. The percentages of hardwoods given are too low for the total 
stand of timber, doubtless because any one species of hardwood usually 
grows so scattered that it does not pay a lumberman to buy much land 
for the sake of the hardwood on it. If we multiply the figures for short- 
leaf and loblolly pine in that report by two and those for cypress and 
hardwoods by four, we will get a fairly close approximation to the total 
standing timber in each region — probably as nearly correct as could be 
obtained by using any other arbitrary multipliers throughout, for it 
makes the percentages of the pines too high in some regions and too low 
in others, but about right for the whole State. The percentages obtained 
in this manner can now be used as a check on my 1913 figures, which 
were derived in a rather crude manner (since improved on) from my 
field notes. 

The following table is intended to partly supersede the list of trees on 
pages 189-191 and the table on page 195 of my report on the forests of 
Alabama. It gives for each of the ten regions and for the whole State 
the percentage of forests in 1910, the expenditure for fertilizer in 1909 
per acre of improved land, the percentage of evergreens, and the per- 
centage of tlie present forest made up by each species of tree (exclusive 
of the smaller and rarer species). Percentages are given' only to the 
nearest integer, and consequently all below i/o ^^"g represented by 0; but 
where a given species is believed not to occur at all in a certain region, or 
only along its edges, dots are used instead. 

In my 1913 report one could ascertain in which region any species 
was most abundant only by looking through the 19 regional lists; but 
this table shows it at a glance by bringing the percentages together in 
parallel columns. The highest percentages in each row are printed in 



212 



proceedings; of the St)riETY OF AMEincAN FoRE:STER« 



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002 763 111 3 

PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY OF AMERKAX FORESTERS 



heavier type (except where there is uncertainty about which is the high- 
est) to aid the eye in picking them out. and also to indicate the most 
characteristic species in each region when one is running do^\^l one col- 
umn at a time. 

The technical names used are the same as in tlic ll'i:] report, and cor- 
respond in nearly every case with those in Sudwortli's (*heck List. Mohr's 
Plant Life of Alal)ama. Smairs Flora of the Southeastern United States, 
and Sargeiifs Manual. The common names are those used throughout 
the South, hut not necessarily in other parts of the country. The names 
of evergreens are printed in heavier type, as in many of the writer's 
previous publications. 

The probable quantity of any species in the State is of course the 
product of its State percentage and the total stand of timber previously 
mentioned. Tlie evergreen percentages for the several regions are olv 
tained by adding those in the columns and allowing a little more for 
rarer evergreens not listed. 

Although only al)Out half the known arborescent s]ux'ies in the State 
are represented in this table, it includes practically all that are of any 
commercial importance. It will be seen at a glance that the pines pre- 
dominate, as in most of the other States liordering the Atlantic and Gulf 
coasts. If the figures arc correct, no hardwood species constitutes as 
much as 8 per cent of the forests of any one region, as liere defined (this 
would not be true of some of the smaller divisions in tlie more complete 
report, however), or ') per cent of the standing tiinlier of tlie whole State. 

The evergreen percentages are generally highest in the regions with 
the poorest soils, as indicated by the amount of land remaining in forest 
and the sums spent for Fertilizers on the cultivated areas. In the pri- 
meval forests the dilTerences in evergreen percentages between the rich 
and poor regions would dou1»tless have been greater, for in the regions 
with rich soils most oF the liardwoods have l)een destroyed to make room 
for crops, while in the sandy ])ine lands a large part of the pine has been 
removed by lumbermen, and the hardwoods, which are there chiefly con- 
fined to swamps, have been com]:)aratively little disturbed. 

It would be interesting it we could make an estimate for each region 
of the average stand of timber and its rate of growth and the rate at 
which it is being cut. liut tliere are no suflicient data on these points at 
present. The timl)er is prol)ably growijig faster than it is l)eiug cut in 
some of the regions, but not in most of them. The most rapid growth is 
presumably on the riclier soils, but the longleaf pine, the species most in 
demand, prefers the poorer soils and is probably not holding its own. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

002 763 200 2 



